Past Events

February 25, 2015

3:30 PM - 5:30 PM

"With him my soul was ravished": Prayer & Intimacy in Modern French Catholicism & Study of Religion

Northwestern series on Prayers:
"With him my soul was ravished":Prayer and Intimacy in Modern French Catholicism and the Study of Religion
Lecture by Brenna MooreAssociate Professor, Department of TheologyAssociate Chair of Undergraduate Studies, Rose Hill CampusFordham University

February 24, 2015

12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

EDGS Research Talk: Imagining the Public in Modern India: Liberalism, Law, Religion

Brannon Ingram is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Northwestern University. Broadly, his research examines debates about Sufism, religious authority and Muslim public life in in modern South Asia and South Africa. His peer-reviewed articles are published or forthcoming from The Muslim World, Modern Asian Studies, Critical Research on Religion, and South Asia: The Journal of South Asian Studies. In May 2014, he convened an interdisciplinary conference here at Northwestern titled, "Imagining the Public in Colonial India," with support from the Buffett Center's Equality, Development and Globalization Studies (EDGS) grant. The conference is the basis for a forthcoming special issue of the journal South Asia in September 2015. The paper he will be giving is a co-authored introduction to that special issue, titled "Imagining the Public in Modern India: Liberalism, Law, Religion."

February 19, 2015

12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Religion, Law and Politics Speaker Series - Benjamin L. Berger

Title: “Law's Religion: Religious Difference adn the Conceits of Constitutionalism”
Department of Political Science EDGS 2014-15 Speaker Series
Organizer: Elizabeth Shakman HurdSponsor: Equality, Development and Globalization Studies (EDGS) ProgramCo-sponsors: Department of Political Science, Department of Religious Studies, Graduate Student Workshop in Religion & Global Politics
Location: Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies, 1902 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm/lunch included
Description:The series will bring together seven distinguished scholars with Northwestern faculty, graduate and undergraduate students interested in the interaction of law, religion, culture and politics in social, historical, political and legal contexts. Serving as a forum for reflection on theoretical, methodological, and critical issues in law and society, religion and diversity, and culture and politics in the US and globally, the series will traverse disciplinary boundaries to explore these questions drawing on insights from political science, law, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, and history.
The series will complement and contribute to discussions, teaching, and institution building in this field at Northwestern, including the Religion & Global Politics Certificate Program, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Robert Orsi’s graduate seminar “Religion and Modernity” (Winter 2015), and the Graduate Student Workshop on Religion & Global Politics led by Mona Oraby and Ariel Schwartz.
Professor Alessandro Ferrari will be visiting Northwestern in fall 2014 as the Roberta Buffett Visiting Professor of International Studies, and Professor Vanja Savic will be in residence in the fall and winter quarters, also affiliated with BCICS.

February 18, 2015

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

Finnish Eastern Orthodox Women and the Virgin Mary

"Finnish Eastern Orthodox Women and the Virgin Mary" by Elina Vuola, Academy Professor, Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki
The Orthodox Church is an important minority church in largely Lutheran Finland. Virgin Mary is central in the tradition. Based on interviews with Finnish Orthodox women, including some Skolt Sami - a small indigenous minority in Northeastern Lapland, Orthodox by religion - on their relationship with the Mother of God, issues regarding gender and minority identity, ethnicity, and embodiment are highlighted. What is the meaning of the Virgin Mary and how is it related to women´s status and self-understanding in the Orthodox Church? How do contemporary Orthodox women perceive and interpret their identities in relation to their religious tradition but also to the secular Finnish society?

January 22, 2015

12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Religion, Law & Politics Speaker Series - Ruth Marshall

Ruth Marshall, Associate Professor, University of Toronto
Title: “Global Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of Evangelism in the Global South”Ruth Marshall is Associate Professor in the Departments of Political Science and Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria (U. Chicago Press, 2009) and numerous scholarly articles on the political implications of Pentecostalism and postcolonial politics in West Africa. She’s interested in the contemporary nexus between religion and politics and the challenge of clearing an analytical space in which the political productivity of religious discourse and practice may be analyzed non-reductively. She is currently undertaking two major research projects, one funded by the SSRC, investigating prayer as a form of political praxis, and the other studying the political implications of the evangelization of Europe and North America by Pentecostals from the Global South. In 2013-14 she was a Chancellor Jackman Fellow in the Humanities at the U of Toronto’s Jackman Humanities Institute where she began work on a new book which examines the renewed ethico-political force of religious language in the public sphere and the political challenge that global revivalism poses to democratic forms of life, while exploring the possibilities and limits of a post-secular politics of translation for articulating a new relationship between the religious and the political.
Lunch Included

January 20, 2015

12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Religion, Law and Politics Speaker Series - Vanja-Ivan Savic

Title: “After the Age of Communism: Religious Life, Law, and National Identity in East and Central Europe”
Department of Political Science EDGS 2014-15 Speaker Series
Organizer: Elizabeth Shakman HurdSponsor: Equality, Development and Globalization Studies (EDGS) ProgramCo-sponsors: Department of Political Science, Department of Religious Studies, Graduate Student Workshop in Religion & Global Politics
Location: Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies, 1902 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm/lunch included
Description:The series will bring together seven distinguished scholars with Northwestern faculty, graduate and undergraduate students interested in the interaction of law, religion, culture and politics in social, historical, political and legal contexts. Serving as a forum for reflection on theoretical, methodological, and critical issues in law and society, religion and diversity, and culture and politics in the US and globally, the series will traverse disciplinary boundaries to explore these questions drawing on insights from political science, law, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, and history.
The series will complement and contribute to discussions, teaching, and institution building in this field at Northwestern, including the Religion & Global Politics Certificate Program, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Robert Orsi’s graduate seminar “Religion and Modernity” (Winter 2015), and the Graduate Student Workshop on Religion & Global Politics led by Mona Oraby and Ariel Schwartz.
Professor Alessandro Ferrari will be visiting Northwestern in fall 2014 as the Roberta Buffett Visiting Professor of International Studies, and Professor Vanja Savic will be in residence in the fall and winter quarters, also affiliated with BCICS.

How Theological is Hegel’s Theology?” Hegel’s Lessons for Contemporary Philosophy of Religion

Presented by Nicholas Adams, Senior Lecturer in Theology and Ethics at the University of Edinsburg

November 14, 2014

11:00 AM - 1:00 PM

Ingvild Torsen: After-life of Phenomenology Research Workshop

Ingvild Torsen (University of Oslo, Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas) presents "Disinterest and truth. On Heidegger's interpretation of Kant's aesthetics"
Location: Crowe 1-140
Abstract: Central to Heidegger’s philosophical treatment of art is the characterization of art as a “happening of truth.” This means that an artwork should be understood as an event that opens up a way of being for an audience. Heidegger’s approach to art, with its emphasis on truth, is often portrayed as a rejection of the tradition of modern aesthetics, and especially this tradition’s emphasis on taste and subjectivity. I claim that such a portrait is a caricature and that analyzing Heidegger’s comments on Kant’s aesthetics brings out a much more nuanced picture of what is at stake with the notions of subjectivity and truth in modern aesthetics, both for Heidegger and for us.
Unlike his much more substantial work on the first Critique, Heidegger’s take on Kant’s aesthetics has received little attention. Since Heidegger is known in general to dismiss the subjectivist turn in modern philosophy as a confusion with detrimental consequences, one might expect that in the realm of aesthetics, the target of the critique will be Kant, the author of the seminal text of modern aesthetics, which presents an analogous “subjectivist turn.” However, when Heidegger turns to aesthetics and its history in his lectures on Nietzsche and the will to power as art, Kant is not identified as representing such a “subjectivization.” Instead, Heidegger understands Kant and the third Critique’s notion of disinterestedness in particular as a source of insight, offering an interpretation of Kantian disinterestedness as analogous to his own notion of “letting be.”

November 4, 2014

12:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Ethnographies of Religion & Politics: Reflections From the Field

This graduate student roundtable features Nurhaizatul Jamil (Anthropology), Gde Metera (Political Science), Mona Oraby (Political Science), and Ariel Schwartz (Religious Studies) whose geographic specialties include Singapore, Indonesia, the United States, and Egypt. They will discuss the types of questions researchers grapple with in the field and as they conceptualize their larger projects. Graduate students and faculty working in these areas and with an interest in the ethnographic study of religion are encouraged to attend. Lunch will be served. Please RSVP to Mona Oraby (moraby@u.northwestern.edu) by Friday, October 31.

November 2, 2014

9:00 AM - 3:00 PM

Graduate Conference: "Religion and The Natural Elements"

Through this conference, we aim to cultivate new ways of thinking about religion and the natural world. We focus on religion’s intersections with aspects of nature, from theenvironment, climate, flora, and fauna, to human interactions with the natural, in the form of spirits, gods and goddesses, and miracles. This conference will explore the relationships among ecosystems, religious practice, and religious thought.

November 1, 2014

5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Graduate Conference: "Religion and The Natural Elements"

Through this conference, we aim to cultivate new ways of thinking about religion and the natural world. We focus on religion’s intersections with aspects of nature, from theenvironment, climate, flora, and fauna, to human interactions with the natural, in the form of spirits, gods and goddesses, and miracles. This conference will explore the relationships among ecosystems, religious practice, and religious thought.

November 1, 2014

9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Graduate Conference: "Religion and The Natural Elements"

Through this conference, we aim to cultivate new ways of thinking about religion and the natural world. We focus on religion’s intersections with aspects of nature, from theenvironment, climate, flora, and fauna, to human interactions with the natural, in the form of spirits, gods and goddesses, and miracles. This conference will explore the relationships among ecosystems, religious practice, and religious thought.

October 30, 2014

12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Religion, Law and Politics Speaker Series - Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

Title: “Spiritual Governance: The Chaplain as Priest of the Secular”
Department of Political Science EDGS 2014-15 Speaker Series
Organizer: Elizabeth Shakman HurdSponsor: Equality, Development and Globalization Studies (EDGS) ProgramCo-sponsors: Department of Political Science, Department of Religious Studies, Graduate Student Workshop in Religion & Global Politics
Location: Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies, 1902 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm/lunch included
Description:The series will bring together seven distinguished scholars with Northwestern faculty, graduate and undergraduate students interested in the interaction of law, religion, culture and politics in social, historical, political and legal contexts. Serving as a forum for reflection on theoretical, methodological, and critical issues in law and society, religion and diversity, and culture and politics in the US and globally, the series will traverse disciplinary boundaries to explore these questions drawing on insights from political science, law, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, and history.
The series will complement and contribute to discussions, teaching, and institution building in this field at Northwestern, including the Religion & Global Politics Certificate Program, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Robert Orsi’s graduate seminar “Religion and Modernity” (Winter 2015), and the Graduate Student Workshop on Religion & Global Politics led by Mona Oraby and Ariel Schwartz.
Professor Alessandro Ferrari will be visiting Northwestern in fall 2014 as the Roberta Buffett Visiting Professor of International Studies, and Professor Vanja Savic will be in residence in the fall and winter quarters, also affiliated with BCICS.

October 16, 2014

12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Religion, Law and Politics Speaker Series - Alessandro Ferrari

Title: “The Politics of Religious Freedom in the Mediterranean: Between Arab Spring and European Autumn?”
Department of Political Science EDGS 2014-15 Speaker Series
Organizer: Elizabeth Shakman HurdSponsor: Equality, Development and Globalization Studies (EDGS) ProgramCo-sponsors: Department of Political Science, Department of Religious Studies, Graduate Student Workshop in Religion & Global Politics
Location: Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies, 1902 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm/lunch included
Description:The series will bring together seven distinguished scholars with Northwestern faculty, graduate and undergraduate students interested in the interaction of law, religion, culture and politics in social, historical, political and legal contexts. Serving as a forum for reflection on theoretical, methodological, and critical issues in law and society, religion and diversity, and culture and politics in the US and globally, the series will traverse disciplinary boundaries to explore these questions drawing on insights from political science, law, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, and history.
The series will complement and contribute to discussions, teaching, and institution building in this field at Northwestern, including the Religion & Global Politics Certificate Program, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Robert Orsi’s graduate seminar “Religion and Modernity” (Winter 2015), and the Graduate Student Workshop on Religion & Global Politics led by Mona Oraby and Ariel Schwartz.
Professor Alessandro Ferrari will be visiting Northwestern in fall 2014 as the Roberta Buffett Visiting Professor of International Studies, and Professor Vanja Savic will be in residence in the fall and winter quarters, also affiliated with BCICS.

October 15, 2014

3:30 PM - 6:00 PM

What Are We up to When We Pray? An Ethnography of a Group of Muslim Women in Iran

Lecture by Niloofar Haeri,
Professor and Chair, Department of AnthropologyJohns Hopkins University

May 22, 2014

4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Phenomenology Workshop: Julia Ireland - Whitman College

On Thursday May 22nd, Julia Ireland (Philosophy, Whitman College) will present a talk entitled "Naming Physis and the 'Inner Truth of National Socialism': A New Archival Discovery" for the After-life of Phenomenology Workshop. The talk will be held from 4:00-6:00pm in Kresge 2-500 (the German Seminar Room).
Abstract: With the recent publication of Heidegger’s Schwarze Hefte (Black Notebooks), the precise nature of Heidegger’s politics and its relationship to his philosophy is once again under debate. Julia Ireland will present a different way to understand and contextualize that debate in her presentation of Heidegger’s first reference to the “inner truth of National Socialism” in the “Germania” and “The Rhine” lecture course, which predates and provides the interpretive context for Heidegger’s use of this same phrase five months later in Introduction into Metaphysics. What is unusual about Ireland’s approach is its philological reconstruction of Heidegger’s manuscript page, which progresses as a series of insertions that are both a commentary on Heidegger’s interpretation of Nature in Hölderlin and a rejection of Nazi ideology as this specifically concerns what was termed the “new science.” (She will be projecting and working through the manuscript page at her talk.) Ireland’s thesis is that Heidegger understands the “inner truth of National Socialism” as a fu/siv-event. In addition to supplying a paradigm for what a complicated reading of the Schwarze Hefte would entail, Ireland’s analysis includes a fascinating archival story about an editorial error, the cleaning up of Heidegger’s typescript for the “Germania” and “The Rhine” course, and the generation of independent manuscript copies by Heidegger’s most important and unknown war-time lover.

Atalia Omer, Kroc Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame
Atalia Omer is Assistant Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She earned her Ph.D. from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. Her research interests include the theoretical study of the interrelation between religion and nationalism, religion and conflict analysis, and peacebuilding; the role of national / religious / ethnic diasporas in the dynamics of conflict transformation and peace; multiculturalism as a framework for conflict transformation and as a theory of justice; the role of subaltern narratives in reimagining questions of peace and justice; religion and solidarity activism in the diaspora; and the symbolic appropriation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in other zones of conflict. Her first book When Peace Is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice (University of Chicago Press: 2013) examines the way the Israeli peace camp addresses interrelationships among religion, ethnicity, and nationality and how it interprets justice vis-a-vis the Palestinian conflict. Omer is also a co-editor of the Oxford Handbook on Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
This event is made possible through the generous support of the Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies, the Buffett Center's Sams Family Middle East Studies Fund, The Graduate School Catalyst Grant, the Department of Political Science, and the Department of Religious Studies.
For more information about the event contact Mona Oraby at monaoraby2015@u.northwestern.edu.

May 7, 2014

3:30 PM - 6:00 PM

“Victor Turner, Anthropology, and Christianity”.

Lecture by Timothy Larsen, McManis Professor of Christian Thought, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, and the author of The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith (Oxford University Press).
Event is by invitation only for Religious Studies faculty and graduate students. Reception following.

“Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America.”

Lecture by Catherine A. Brekus, Professor of Religions in America and the History of Christianity, The University of Chicago

April 9, 2014

3:30 PM - 6:00 PM

Shall We Liberate the Gods?: Materiality and the Problem of Agency in the Study of Religion.

"Shall We Liberate the Gods?: Materiality and the Problem of Agency in the Study of Religion."
Presented by Manuel A. Vasquez, Professor of Religions of Latin America and among U.S. Latinos, Method & Theory, Religion & Globalization at University of Florida
reception following

March 4, 2014

5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Torture, Spectacular and Routine: Vengeance and Regulation in Late Ancient Christianity.

Lecture by Elizabeth A. Castelli,
Professor of Religion at Barnard College